I currently have funding for 2 PhD positions (four years, 90% position/36h per week) to work with me at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien). Both PhDs will work with me on two different research projects, both related to the recent work on proportionality in multi-winner approval voting and Participatory Budgeting:
Citizen-centered democratic innovation: This is an interdisciplinary research project that I co-lead together with a political scientist, Carolina Plescia. In this project, we aim to understand citizen preferences for the voting rules used in Participatory Budgeting and to develop algorithms respecting these preferences as much as possible. To this end, we will combine methods from political science for eliciting citizen’s preferences and legitimacy concerns with methods from computer science that show which properties can actually be satisfied.
Fair online decision making: In this project, we want to leverage the recent advances in our understanding of fairness and proportionality in approval-based multi-winner voting and Participatory Budgeting to provide a novel tool-box for fair group decision making in online applications. Specifically, the plan is to study models that include crucial properties of online group decision making, including trichotomous preferences, incomplete preferences and susceptibility to low-effort manipulation and to provide novel proportionality axioms and proportional voting rules for these models.
Details of the Position
Key facts:
– The PhD students will be part of the Semantic Systems group at the Institute for Process, Data and Knowledge Management, WU Wien.
– The PhD students will join a new, interdisciplinary doctoral college on Digital Humanism, a joint effort of several Viennese universities.
– Both positions are funded for 4 years.
– The gross salary will be approximately 3220€, paid 14 times a year.
– Start date October 15. A later start would also be possible.
What to expect:
– Research, for yourself and others: You will be supporting publishing activities and carrying out theoretical and applied research of practical relevance with international cooperation partners.
– Writing a dissertation: You will perform your own research and write your dissertation.
– Learning from top researchers: You will be getting your own research career off to a great start by working together with renowned researchers in your field and learning from them.
– Teamwork: At the institute, you’ll be working to advance research in your field together with the entire team.
– Building up a personal network: You will be using the pre-doc phase to create your own professional network for the future.
What you have to offer:
– Academic degree: You have a master’s degree in computer science, economics, mathematics, political science or related areas that qualifies you for enrollment in a doctoral program at WU.
– Advanced skills: You have experience with topics in (Computational) Social Choice, Digital Democracy, Algorithm Design, Logic, Knowledge Representation or related areas.
– Language: Proficiency in English, especially in writing (German is not required).
What we offer:
– Meaningful work in a pleasant working atmosphere
– Diversity and appreciation in an open-minded, inclusive and family-friendly environment
– Flexibility and individual freedom thanks to flexible working hours
– A top business and economics university with renowned experts on the faculty and a comsoc@duke.edu tdiverse range of subjects, triple accredited
– Excellent infrastructure, both technologically and architecturally, and a wide range of WU service units
– Inspiring campus life with over 2,400 employees in research, teaching, and administration and approximately 21,500 students on a conveniently located, architecturally unique campus in the heart of Vienna
– Generous support for continuing education and travel
If you are interested in this position, please write me a short email to jan.maly@wu.ac.at to express interest, attaching your CV. I’m also happy to answer any questions. Please write to me by August 31, but I’d appreciate an earlier informal indication if you are considering applying, so we can discuss further.